Dear Mailing List,
Five years without setting foot in the US came to an end last month when Andrea and I landed in New York to start a five-week promotional tour. I was on the lookout for seismic cultural shifts, but the only difference I detected was the aroma of legal marijuana wafting through the windows of our friend’s Greenwich Village apartment, morning, noon and night.
The tour took us hopping and skipping across the country, sometimes sharing the stage with luminaries such as Yosvany Terry, David Byrne, Buddy Miller, Jerry Harrison or Joe Nick Patoski and sometimes doing it on my own (with timely interjections from Andrea and her expertly honed playlists). One event took place at the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma; it and the Woody Guthrie Center next door were among our tourist highlights – astonishingly good and definitely worth adding to any travel plans for the American West…
Back in Britain, I’ve got another burst which started yesterday, Saturday October 12 at the Llais Festival in Cardiff. Going on from there Monday to Manchester (Literature Festival), Tuesday to Liverpool (Waterstones) and October 25 th to Lancaster (Litfest):
Tell your Lancashire friends!
Events in November include ‘A Drink with the Idler’ (online), a Nick Drake event (Southbank, TBA) and a trip to Abergavenny.
It’s been nice finding that passages I wrote a decade ago sound pretty much as I imagined they would when I wrote them back then. I try not to repeat myself at readings, though inevitably when something works well, it gets another airing. Being interviewed brings out different aspects of the book; some that might be of interest include:
Rock’s Backpages | Episode 184: Joe Boyd on global music + Kate & Anna McGarrigle (Also on Apple and Spotify)
The World | In conversation with Marco Werman
Acquarium Drunkard | Transmissions: Joe Boyd
Echoes | A Global Music Journey with Joe Boyd: The Echoes Podcast
Word in your Ear – on Apple and Spotify
Print highlights include Vanity Fair running an excerpt from the Jamaica chapter, a Washington Post interview and a wonderful review from Offbeat, the great New Orleans music magazine:
Vanity Fair | Book Excerpt: How Jamaica’s 1950s DJs Gave Rise to Their Counterparts onthe Disco and Hip-Hop Scenes
Washington Post | Interview: He helped to popularize ‘world music,’ and now he tells its vast story
Offbeat Magazine | Review by Jay Mazza
Ze Books and our US publicists Shore Fire did themselves proud (as have Faber in the UK, of course). For those who might be interested, we’ve been posting regularly about our travels on the ‘joeboydofficial’ Instagram page.
British friends have asked about the pre-election American mood. Music, at least the kind I write about, creates its own bubble, so no Maga caps were spotted in the audiences. Homes we visited all had Harris/Walz signs out front; the closest we came to a glance across the divide was a huge billboard in Texas reading “Angry? Vote Republican”. Cars coming the other way saw “Tired of being angry? Vote Democrat”. Here’s hoping.
Hasta la vista
Joe